Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Procrastination

Everyone in New York City has a shrink. I must say, those fuckers have one hell of a recession-proof industry. Well, now you can count me as one of those jaded, therapy seeking New Yorkers (and I use that term to describe me based on location only) who spend their cash weekly on co-pays to have someone give them more shit to think about.

The new doctor tells me I am a classic PTSD case. I practically laughed at her as I thought about the guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who actually have PTSD. She tells me, “no, PTSD is very common after any traumatic event.” I’m sitting there thinking the whole time that I’ve never really thought of getting my face rearranged as a “traumatic event.” How foolish of me.

So the problem is that the year and a half since I got jumped has been the toughest, busiest and most stressful year and a half of my life. Between moving here (and all the effort that took) to getting acclimated, between trying to make friends and finding a job, I put my assault on the back burner. She asked me if I have dreams about it, “Dreams,” I asked, “I don’t even think about it,” and the truth is, I really don’t. The problem is that regardless of whether or not I think about it, it is there and good god does it make an impact.

I really started noticing it a few months ago. First it was little things, like analyzing each and every person who passed on the street and assessing their threat level. Then it was flipping out behind the wheel when I got cut off, then it was getting in shouting matches at work. Holes in walls, let’s not get into specifics here but suffice to say I was becoming a paranoid, angry individual. I could and can feel it consume me from time to time, like there is no stopping it once it starts. I liken it to a wildfire, starts small but in a short time is a gigantic blaze totally out of control. That describes me to the letter.

Trouble is that I was too busy to really deal with any of these problems, I just relied on my old friend Mary Jane to help me through the stress. But now life has slowed down a bit, things are settling into place and the “symptoms,” if you want to call them that, are now front and center. I blew up at a family event in front of a bunch of people, embarrassed myself and completely flipped out. It took that night to push myself to go see a shrink, or more accurately it took that night for the people who care about me to push me to see a shrink. I had been procrastinating too long.

I don’t like feeling like a patient, or like something is wrong with me…but something is wrong with me. Can’t fucking wait to sort this one out.